FISHING AND FISH-HOOKS, ETC. 327 
sovereign of Sidon especially, and that a woman, that 
is to be ascribed the great advancement which was 
made in the comfort and prosperity of the people by 
the regulation and protection of the fisheries. Her 
name was Gatis, and afterwards, by what appears to 
have been a higher title of honour, Atergatis. She was 
the author of an edict by ‘which it was enacted that no 
one should eat fish without a licence from her, and 
that every fisherman should bring to her the fish he 
had caught—a claim which, as Selden believed, was 
intended to imply that she was so far the sovereign 
of the neighbouring sea that no one should be per- 
mitted to take fish in it without a licence from herself. 
That this was not an act of severity to her own sub- 
jects, but was rather intended to protect them from 
the encroachments of strangers, appears from the high 
favour in which she was always held by the former ; 
for after death, according to the theology of these 
ages, she was regarded as a goddess, and fishes of 
gold and silver were dedicated to her—even from 
districts that were situated at a considerable distance— 
and in some places people abstained from eating fishes 
in honour of her. This circumstance is to be ascribed 
to the fact that the image which represented the 
goddess Atergatis—who was also called Derketo— 
was made in the form of a woman with a fish’s 
tail, and in some instances with the head and arms 
only of a woman, but the whole. body of a fish. 
